updated 02:37 pm EST, Wed February 20, 2013

Charge time reduced by 75 percent

Qualcomm has announced several new Snapdragon technologies ahead of Mobile World Congress, including a voice-wake feature and improvements to Quick Charge. Voice Activation, limited to Snapdragon 800-powered devices, enables a device to wake from standby after hearing a spoken phrase set by the device manufacturer, such as "Hey Snapdragon."

The voice wake feature is said to utilize the least amount of power possible, just enough to listen for the custom words, to avoid wasting power in standby mode, though it remains unclear if there is any difference in power draw compared to traditional button-based activation.

Available as an integrated feature within the Snapdragon 800 chip or as a standalone component, the Quick Charge 2.0 system is claimed to further improve charging times over its predecessor. The original Quick Charge implementation boasted a 40 percent time reduction, while v2.0 is claimed to drop charge times by 75 percent. Qualcomm suggests its internal tests dropped the charge time for an unnamed tablet from seven hours down to just three hours.

The press release, which was posted by Engadget, also notes that companies are already developing 55 different devices powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 chip, with the first smartphones and tablets expected to arrive in the second half of the year.